The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. Thomas Huxley

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Back to Blighty

For a smaller jaunt this time: just 4 weeks, divided roughly into:

London, 1 long week - part work, part play, part Birmingham conference.Cornwall and relatives in Somerset - 1 weekNorthern Italy - 2 weeks. Got to get these time priorities right and these feel good.

Highlights to look forward to?

Madeleine Peyroux concert at the Barbican - lucked out finding the last 4 tickets in the world for this and between the InterWeb and Royal Mail - bought Sunday in Kent UK, in my hot grasping little hand at the other end of the earth (NZ) Friday - not a bad advertisement for global capitalism, eh? Show me a Gummint that could organise that (outside their secret three-letter agencies, natch).

Turner entrants will be there at Tate British - just down the road from our favoured lodgings area - and of course there will be an actual Turner (JMW) or two there too.

London Museum is just round the corner from the Barbican, so a coffe, meal (and as jetlag will be rampaging) perhaps a few zee's in a quiet corner. Just like the minimum-wage security guards these hapless shows seem to employ. The z's, not the coffee...

More National/Portrait Gallery viewing. We rather overlooked some gems here last time through.

Tate Modern - the displays will have altered, and of course there was that terrible incident where a cleaner mistook an exhibit for real rubbish. I seem to recall predicting this.......

The Kensington museums strip: Science, V&A, and Natural History. We never did get to the latter, so will remedy that this time. And walk back in the general direction of Harrod's and actually look inside the Brompton Oratory this time, to see what Nick Cave was on about (Boatman's Call).

And of course we will be staying only a few clicks away in Somerset from where the fabulous Ariel Atom is made: perhaps a short side trip to Crewkerne? One can dream....